i'd say this has been a hellish week for me (thus little time to do more than pour out some drafts :-0() but compared to what's going down with the Athenians?? Clearly my own travails seem unworthy of the name. It was wonderful to see my old friend Lisa Fithian on the streets of Athens sporting a Gaza flotilla tee, speaking to folks in Syntagma Square about evil IMF and the conspiracy that's not really a conspiracy, just troika (US-EU-Israel) politics as usual.
Have been following the strikes on ContraInfo, apparently a derivative of IMC-Athens; they were running a live stream and have an excellent photo montage of the demonstrations. As far as more mainstream reporting goes, this report/interview on RT is particularly on the mark - embedded here to increase the chances you'll watch it. Notice how he sections off 'anarchist and provocatuers,' an understated reminder of how the state's demonstration propoganda works. Two statements are particularly worth quoting: 'They [the government] seem to be completely indifferent to this reality [situation's volatility]', and 'We’ve seen this before…. the IMF has come in and plundered the nation for corporate consolidation.' In essence, they are turning the populace into debt slaves for big banks and investors. If Papandreou loses control of the country, what are these invisible euro-moghuls going to do next, send in NATO? Blackwater (Xe)? i'd be willing to bet money that there are Greeks who would rather pack the Parthenon with C4 than see it become the private property of some unnamed Kuwaiti oil baron.... and that would be absolutely tragic, since robber barons come and go but there will only ever be one, irreplaceable Parthenon.
Have been following the strikes on ContraInfo, apparently a derivative of IMC-Athens; they were running a live stream and have an excellent photo montage of the demonstrations. As far as more mainstream reporting goes, this report/interview on RT is particularly on the mark - embedded here to increase the chances you'll watch it. Notice how he sections off 'anarchist and provocatuers,' an understated reminder of how the state's demonstration propoganda works. Two statements are particularly worth quoting: 'They [the government] seem to be completely indifferent to this reality [situation's volatility]', and 'We’ve seen this before…. the IMF has come in and plundered the nation for corporate consolidation.' In essence, they are turning the populace into debt slaves for big banks and investors. If Papandreou loses control of the country, what are these invisible euro-moghuls going to do next, send in NATO? Blackwater (Xe)? i'd be willing to bet money that there are Greeks who would rather pack the Parthenon with C4 than see it become the private property of some unnamed Kuwaiti oil baron.... and that would be absolutely tragic, since robber barons come and go but there will only ever be one, irreplaceable Parthenon.
This morning i was thinking about how, when i studied development economics in the late 1970s and early 80s, it was all about GDP and GNP, infrastructure carrying capacity and reducing underemployment, comparing Five Year Plans, e.g. in India, to free market development, and yes, debt ratios as well, but not in the way they are formulated now. Apparently i took too long to blink and missed the reordering of key indicators for successful economic policy. Nowadays, the important things are investor confidence, currency stability, healthy bond markets and [non]restrictions on the privatization of national wealth. What has changed about us that has changed our societal values so drastically, that we now believe multinational bank liquidity is paramount to the majority of people earning a decent wage and having a decent life? Especially since it's clear that we're not really talking about the banks so much as the bankERS - do we need that class of super rich to set the standards for what living a good life means? Are people who mostly produce print-outs better role models than people who produce the actual paper those derivative models are printed on? It's ironic, indeed, that in the same breath the state-media propoganda machine wants us to drool over the luxuries of royalty, they also want to make us believe that austerity is the responsible way to go. Slaves with dreams... i suppose that's where the term spartan comes from?
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